Re: Reasoning
Target tasks are whatever a human could do by bashing keys on their keyboard. Obviously, that varies from job to job. I literally googled a list of “22 middle-class jobs worth exploring” and what tasks the one paragraph job spec listed:
Book publisher - sift through the mounds of dross submissions to find the very few potential gems. Machine Shortlist will be analysed more fully by a human. You know what the current coping mechanism at publishers is? They arbitrarily drop half of submissions in the bin, unread. Because what else if all you have is the time in the day.
Book editor - read what your authors have written, provide basic copy-editing and advice (like autocorrect, but also fact-check, consistency check, stylistic, readability), or indeed the author can have this on their own desktop - hint: this is already deployed, and first indications are that books edited this way are *significantly* better edited than human editors - both sales and book critic reviews.
Interpreter - simultaneous interpreting is a *major* blocker both for doctors, and particular our court system. Currently up to 10% of all court trials are abandoned as ineffective because the right set of interpreters are not available for some accused or witness. In a medical context, the alternative to machine translation in practice, isn’t “a better translation by a human”. It’s that an interpreter isn’t available, and the patient doesn’t get treated. Simple as that.
Office Manager - “plan meetings, make travel arrangements, process payroll, answer telephones, create the work schedule for administrative staff, office procurement, and manage file systems.” See anything that an AI *couldn’t* do? It doesn’t have to be as good as a human office manager, just good enough to avoid paying a whole salary, viz supermarket self-checkout.
Welcome to the real world.
